They both can look back on 2012 knowing they were top-20 performers in the Sprint Cup Series. But they also look back on 2012 knowing they don’t want to go through that type of year again.

Both drivers had three crew chiefs during the season and both had to deal with the uncertainty of whether they would return to the team in 2013.

They both are back at RPM, and both look forward to an improved and more stable season. Ambrose, who thought he might end up going back home to Australia to race, is optimistic based on RPM remaining a Ford team (it had been negotiating with Dodge until Dodge opted to leave the sport) with a strong alliance to Roush Fenway Racing.

“I’m here to win,” Ambrose said during the Sprint Media Tour last month. “I’m here to try to win and I want to be competitive. If RPM had to make choices that they were going to go through their own transition period, maybe it was not for me.

“So RPM had to work out where they were heading. They made some great choices. They’ve got a great future in front of them with the choices they made. I want to be part of that. I’m not going anywhere until they get rid of me or I don’t feel I’m in a position to keep moving forward and win races.”

Almirola is glad to be back with the team as his job was up in the air for much of last season. A late 2011-2012 offseason replacement after AJ Allmendinger left for Penske Racing, Almirola struggled throughout the first half of the year.

He improved thanks to a change in crew chiefs late in the year and also with the life-altering experience of the birth of his son in September.

“I had to read all the stuff that you guys (in the media) write that I was losing my job and every other person that was looking for a ride was gong to take my job, according to you guys,” Almirola said.

“At the end of the day when I would go home and hang out with my wife and my kid, none of that stuff mattered to me. I didn’t care what you guys wrote. I didn’t care what you guys thought. I went home and I hung out with my son and that is all that mattered to me.”

Both Ambrose and Almirola believe the key to 2013 will be to finish races as strong as they were running early in the race.

“We led segments of the race but we were not able to convert that to wins at the end of the day,” Ambrose said.

“We don’t want to be good for 100 miles, we want to be good for 500. We need to be good for the last 100 at least to put ourselves in contention. That is where the great drivers and great teams make the difference.”

Last year, Ambrose got off to a slow start with no top-10s in his first 10 races but then posted four top-10s in the next six. He strung together four consecutive top-10s in August, including a victory at Watkins Glen, which gave him an outside shot of making the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

But with 10 races left in the year, as the team searched for answers for Almirola, crew chief Todd Parrott went over to Almirola’s team and Ambrose was paired with Mike Ford. That relationship lasted less than two months before Drew Blickensderfer—a former Roush Fenway Racing crew chief who was struggling at Richard Childress Racing—was brought in to guide the team.

Meanwhile, Almirola had only two finishes outside the top 20 in his final 10 races, including two top-10s in the final four.

“It turned out to be a year in transition but it wasn’t designed to be that way,” Ambrose said. “Todd Parrott did a fantastic job for me and when all that went down and changes were made company-wide, they were difficult changes to go through.

“I feel great as a whole how that helped the company but it didn’t help my season that much.”

Also not helping was the uncertainty of whether Ambrose would return as RPM looked at its manufacturer options.

“There was a period of time there I was up for renewal and they couldn’t do it because they didn’t know where their future was going to be,” Ambrose said.

“So when you have that conversation, then you go, ‘Who are they going to be with? Are they going to be with Ford again?’ Ford is important to me. My career was built racing Fords.”

Almirola’s season was just as bumpy. Almirola has driven for several teams, seeing potential opportunities vanish with team mergers or lack of sponsorship. He had 35 career Cup starts entering the season but those came over a five-year span.

“Last year, I was skeptical and unsure going into the season just about everything—about the demands of the season and demands of racing on Sunday,” Almirola said. “(Now) I’m fully aware of how it all works, how my season is going to go.

“I’ve been to every racetrack now in a Cup car so I’m not going to show up anywhere blind. Every time I unload, I feel like I’m going to have a better understanding of what I’m going to need to go fast at each racetrack.”

And if he has a bad day, he has a little more life perspective now than a year ago. Going home to help take care of his baby is what helped him not dwell on the bad days last year.

“It was very therapeutic and still is,” Almirola said. “Him and my wife matter the most to me. Racing means the world to me but it’s not everything. Eventually racing is going to end and I’m still going to have my family.”